


Refractions

by Raikim4Never



Series: Monster Carvers AU [2]
Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: AU Shenanigans, Adventure Time References, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The Monster Carvers are not messing around tonight no sir, as per usual at this point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:50:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raikim4Never/pseuds/Raikim4Never
Summary: While working on her Notebook of Spells, one Star Butterfly and her best friend Marco Diaz are startled when the former's mirror starts glowing. Stepping through it, they end up stranded in an unusual place indeed...





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between Raid the Cave and Baby. Canon timeline (until the events of this fic, anyway).

Star Butterfly hmm’d to herself as she wrote down the steps that she remembered from Warnicorn Stampede in her binder. She still felt terrible about losing Glossarcyk, of course, but trying to write down her ancestors spells was surprisingly soothing. Like she had managed to save part of their legacy after all.

“Hey, Star?” Star looked up to see Marco entering her room, a box of donuts in his arms. Several, actually. “How’s it going? I brought you some sugary treats to fuel up.”

“Aw, thanks Marco!” Star smiled at his thoughtfulness. “It’s going… uh. It’s going.” Marco chuckled.

“Yeah, I know how that feels,” he sympathized. “I mean, usually it’s for an essay or something, but…”

Marco trailed off as something caught his eye. He stared and pointed, and when Star turned to look, she dropped her pencil and stared herself. Star’s full body mirror, currently shoved next to her window, was glowing. In fact, it was shining so brightly, it was kind of hard to look at for more than a few seconds. Star summoned sunglasses for both of them, then inched towards the mirror, wand out in front of her to prepare for any funny business.

“Star, why are you going near it?!”

“Because I wanna see what the heck is going on, a-doy.”

“I really don’t think going near a randomly glowing mirror is a good idea when we have no idea why it’s glowing, Star!”

“Well, how are we going to find out if we don’t investigate?” Star grinned at him. “Come on, I know you waaant tooo…” Marco sighed.

“Yeah, alright, fine.” He joined Star in cautiously approaching the mirror, which did nothing other than continue to shine brightly even when they were standing right next to it. “What now?”

“Now… we poke it.”

“Star. Star no.”

“Star yes!” Star nudged the mirror with her foot, and nearly fell over when her leg went straight through the glass like it wasn’t there. Marco caught her as she eep’d and toppled backwards. “Okay, so, discovery! There’s no glass!”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out.” Marco helped her stand back up. “Do you think it’s a portal to another dimension?”

“Marco, that looks _nothing like_ a portal made by Dimensional Scissors.”

“No, sorry, I meant, you know,” Marco made a vague gesture with both hands, “a _parallel_ dimension. Like a dimension where the two of us already exist, but are different people. Like, we’re evil, or have switched hair colors, or I’m a girl and you’re a boy. Like you see in comics.”

“Oh, that sounds _super cool!_ We’ve gotta check it out now!” Star grabbed Marco and jumped through the portal, ignoring his protests. They landed in a surprisingly dark area full of stars (the in the sky kind, to Star’s disappointment). “Whoa,” Star gaped, shoving her sunglasses up to sit next to her headband as she began looking around. The portal she’d jumped through was shaped very differently from this end, bigger and pointier, like it was the broken remnants of a giant’s mirror, instead of one like her own. All around them were dark-colored crystals of varying sizes, and all of them had some sort of heavy machinery and thick wires wrapped around them. The one the two of them had come through was no exception, and there was a glowing orange light in front of it, which Marco tripped on after getting up.

“Ugh! What is this place?” Marco groaned, looking around as well.

“I have no idea.” Star replied, before stepping towards another crystal, this one with it’s light turned off, to look closer at it. Marco’s head snapped towards her as she gasped in shock at her reflection. It was clear as day, but only showed Star herself. Or, she assumed it was herself, anyway. Her hair was chopped short and she had a bandana with a unicorn head silhouette on it around her neck. She was wearing dirty, tomboyish clothes, and was _missing half her right arm._ “Whoa, Marco! I think I just discovered another me!”

“What, really?” Marco looked startled. “Let me see!” Marco approached and Star stepped aside to let Marco see his own reflection. The Other Marco was older and had pink highlights in his hair, with some kind of crown or tiara peeking out from behind pink bangs on his forehead, and was wearing fancy clothes.

“Whoa, Marco, I think _you’re_ the royal one in that dimension! Cool!” Marco didn’t say anything, but touched the crystal in shock. There was a faint sound like TV static and Marco drew back his quickly, accidentally sliding the image away. Star and Marco both blinked as a scene played before them, staring the other Marco. He was in a brightly lit room, wearing a labcoat, mixing some kind of chemicals together. Next to him what looked like Janna holding a tray of more random objects, examining them with bored-looking movements. Her back was turned to the duo, but they noticed she was dressed like a butler. The two gasped as she turned her head to look at Marco, and revealed eyes that looked like they were literally made of green peppermints and had a chalky white, inhuman complexion. Marco jumped away from the crystal, and the scene faded away into a murky blue, the same color as the crystal.

“Geez, what the heck was that dimension?” Marco asked, then paused. “Timeline. Reality? Ugh.”

“I don’t know, but I wanna see more of them!” Star turned and ran off, looking for more, followed quickly by Marco. Find them they did, since as it turned out every large crystal seemed to reflect a different reality, and wherever they were was full of them.

After a few minutes, there was an electrical thrum as something in the machinery changed, and several lights came on in front of the crystals… while others turned off. Star and Marco froze as the light from the portal they came through faded away.

“Ohhhh no. No no no!” Star charged up to their crystal and tried to get through, but it was solid as a wall. There wasn’t even the image of her bedroom.

“Are… we trapped here?” Marco asked nervously, as Star pounded on the crystal desperately. She stopped after a few seconds, and said nothing as she turned back to Marco.

“I just realized I don’t have my Dimensional Scissors,” she admitted. “…yeah. We’re trapped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAH I'M STILL NOT FINISHED THE NEXT CHAPTER OF MONSTER CARVERS IT HAS BEEN A _MONTH_. D:<
> 
> It's a good think I've been working on this too, but I'm hoping to not have to rely on it often.


	2. Chapter 2

Marco was back to kicking the crystal as Star laid face-down on the floor of the place. The… floor was see-through, so it was actually pretty different from the other times she’d ended up in the same position.

“Okay!” Star announced, pushing herself up. “Marco, that’s not working!”

“Well, I have to do _something!_” Marco huffed. “None of the other crystals are glowing, and I don’t think we could get any help from our other selves, either. Since we need to travel to a different… timeline? I guess? Instead of a different dimension.”

“Maybe whoever set up the machinery can help?” Star asked, waving vaguely at the wires as thick as her torso wrapped around the crystals.

“We don’t even know if someone set this stuff up or if it’s just… here.” Marco sighed. “But, yeah, that’s looking like our best option.” He looked nervously back at their portal. “I’m kind of worried we won’t be able to find our way back, though. Are you sure you can’t charge the thing with your magic?”

“Marco, you _saw_ me try!” Marco winced.

“Well, can you leave a trail, or something?” Star thought for a second.

“_That_ I can do. Raspberry Ribbon Lasso!” She wrapped the lasso from her wand around the light in front of their portal. “Okay, this should work! Let’s go!”

The two started following the industrial-sized wiring, occasionally glancing back nervously to check on the lasso. Eventually, Star groaned and flopped over onto the ground, surrounded by the reflections of alternate selves.

“Uggggh. We’ve been walking for hourrrrs,” she whined. “I wanna summon Cloudyyyy…”

“Star, I’m pretty sure you’ll need to break the lasso to do that.” Marco’s only reply was a groan. “Star, I wanna go home. I’m pretty sure you want to too. We need to find help.”

“You’re the one who said there might be no one here!” Star huffed, and Marco nodded.

“Yeah, but… it’s not like we have a lot of options, here.” He glanced around. “Hey, do you wanna look at some other us’s? Take your mind off things?”

“I dunno, Marco. That’s kinda creepy. Like we’re spying on them, or something.”

“Says Ms. All-Seeing-Eye.”

“Hey, that was… totally just the one time! I needed to find Glossaryck _somehow!_”

“I still don’t know where or when you learned that, Star.” Marco crossed his arms.

“_Hey how about we check out so other us’s?_” Star said quickly, bolting up and towards another crystal, just barely remembering to grab her wand. The crystal was big, almost half as big as the giant one they’d come through, and was even decorated, unlike theirs. “Oh, what?” Star huffed. “I just get static! Lame.”

“What, really?” Marco asked, curious. “That’s new.” He took Star’s place and the static cleared, revealing a Marco that looked almost identical to himself, save for the fact that he wore his hoodie tied around his waist, revealing a shirt that read ‘Hot as Fire’ with a blue flame on it. “Oh, yeah, that’s actually a little disappointing. Was that first other Marco the only interesting one?” Marco sighed and put his hand on the crystal, then looked at Star. “Why do you think you got static, but I just got another one-in-a-million Marco?” 

Star shrugged, neither of the two noticing the electrical hum, and the light of the crystal Marco was leaning on turn on. Star did, however, notice the crystal’s image glitch for a second, the position of the other Marco changing… and then having his hand fly towards where her Marco’s hand was, obviously startled.

“Uh, _Marco?_” Star started, pointing at the crystal. Marco’s expression dropped into a concerned one, before he glanced at the crystal and panicked. He tried to pull his hand away, only to find it stuck like it was glued where it was. The other Marco began pulling frantically at his hand, even trying to push away with his foot. Star’s Marco yelped as his hand, apparently magnetically attracted to the other Marco’s, started to phase through the crystal. “Marco!” Star yelled, running up to and grabbing him, trying to pull him free… as the other Marco called silently to someone out of view, and a shadowy figure on the other side of the crystal did the same as Star. Several tense seconds of Tug-a-Marco followed, and the figure on the other side started using magic to try and propel the two of them backwards, and Star and her Marco through the crystal. Star narrowed her eyes. Two could play at that game. She snapped the lasso off of her wand, pointed next to the crystal, and shouted the most recoil-heavy spell she could think of. The wand nearly went flying out of her hand, but after several seconds, she and Marco landed safely on the same side of the crystal they started from.

Along with other Marco and his friend.

Star groaned at the weight of three _heavy_ bodies on top of her.

“Would you get off?!” She shoved them off, and was rewarded with multiple pained oof’s. Marco, her Marco who was wearing his hoodie like a normal person, dusted himself off and helped her up. “Thank you.” The two of them glanced over at the other Marco and his friend, and gaped openly.

“Tom?!”

The demon groaned, rubbing his head with his right hand, which was covered with a heavy leather glove for some reason.

“How do people I don’t know keep knowing my name?!”

“Because you’re royalty?” the other Marco guessed, eyes closed as he rubbed his own head. “Ugh. I have the _worst_ headache…”

“I think your elbow slammed into my horn. You have _no right_ to talk. Ow.”

Star and Marco just stared slack-jawed. It wasn’t actually the weirdest thing they’d seen, but it was still surreal, especially since it wasn’t happening on a crystal.

Everyone startled at the sound of hissing and Star winced, the machinery around the other crystal was damaged and pouring out ominous green sparks. There was a metallic groan as part of the machinery snapped and brought heavy metal raining down towards the four of them. The other Marco grabbed Tom and scooted backwards as Marco did the same to Star. A loud crash and a zapping sound followed, and the crystal didn’t just dim but turn pure black and even crack a bit. The light in front of the crystal was completely smashed, with the wiring around it destroyed by the debris. Star and her Marco winced. It looked like the other Marco and Tom were just as trapped as they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frick frick friCK FRICK I FORGOT IT WAS UPDATE DAY. D:
> 
> Also I'm at my limit for what I can post for this fic and remain spoiler-free for Monster Carvers, so it'll be a while before I update this again. Apologies. V.V;
> 
> ...and with this, I am out of backup content. Updates may slow down after this. >n>


End file.
